touching – the language of love

I was reading “From Medication to Meditation” by Osho the other day and I came across a passage which touched my heart again. It is about the healing power of our hands through massage. I’d like to quote a part of this passage:

“Massage is something that you can start learning but you never finish. It goes on and on, and the experience becomes continuously deeper and deeper, and higher and higher. Massage is one of the most subtle arts – and it is not only a question of expertise. It is more a question of love. Learn the technique – then forget it. Then just feel, and move by feeling. When you learn deeply, ninety per cent of the work is done by love, ten percent by the technique. By just the very touch, a loving touch, something relaxes in the body. If you love and feel compassion for the other person, and feel the ultimate value of him; if you don’t treat him as if he is a mechanism to be put right, but an energy of tremendous value; if you are grateful that he trusts you and allows you to play with his energy – then by and by you will feel as if you are playing on an organ. The whole body becomes the keys of the organ and you can feel that a harmony is created inside the body. Not only will the person be helped, but you also. Massage is needed in the world because love has disappeared. Once the very touch of lovers was enough. A mother touched the child, played with his body, and it was enough, more than enough. It was deep relaxation and part of love. But that has disappeared from the world. By and by we have forgotten where to touch, how to touch, how deep to touch. In fact touch is one of the most forgotten languages. We have become almost awkward in touching, because the very word has bee corrupted by so-called religious people. They have given it a sexual colour. The word has become sexual and people have become afraid. Everybody is on guard not to be touched unless he allows it. Now in the West the other extreme has come. Touch and massage have become sexual. Now massage is just a cover, a blanket, for sexuality. In fact neither touch or massage are sexual. They are foundation of love. When love falls from its height it becomes sex, and then it becomes ugly. So be prayerful. When you touch the body of a person be prayerful – as if God himself is there, and you are just serving him. Flow with total energy. And whenever you see the body flowing and the energy creating a new pattern of harmony, you will feel a delight that you have never felt before. You will fall into deep meditation. While massaging, just massage. Don’t think of other things because those are distractions. Be in your fingers and your hands as if your whole being, your whole soul is there. Don’t let it be just a touch of the body. Your whole soul enters into the body of the other, penetrates it, relaxes the deepest complexes. And make it a play, don’t do it as a job; make it a game and take it as fun. Laugh and let the other laugh too. Massage is to come to a rapport with the energy of somebody else’s body and to feel where it is missing, to feel where the body is fragmentary and to make it whole…to help the energy of the body so it is no longer fragmentary, no longer contradictory. When the energies of the body are falling into line and becoming as orchestra, then you succeed. So be very respectful of a human’s body. It is the very shrine of God, the temple of god. So, with deep reverence, learn your art. It is one of the greatest things to learn.”

Reference

Osho 1994, From Medication to Meditation, Great Britain, C.W. Daniel Company Limited, pp.179-180